The Nine-Tenths Part 46

But after supper she found herself locked in with another woman. She sat down on the edge of her cot, in the dim light of the room, and with a sharp glance, half fear, half curiosity, regarded her room-mate. This other was a woman of possibly thirty years, with sallow cheeks, bright burning eyes, and straggly hair. She stood before the little wall mirror, apparently examining herself. Suddenly she turned:

"What you looking at, kid?"

Rhona averted her eyes.

"I didn't mean--"

"Say," said the other, "ain't I the awful thing? Not a rat or a puff or a dab of rouge allowed in these here premises. I do look a sight--a fright. Gee!" She turned. "You're not so worse. A little pale, kid."

She came over and sat next to Rhona.

"What'll I call you?"

Rhona shrank. She was a sensitive, ignorant girl, and did not understand this type of woman. Something coa.r.s.e, familiar, vulgar seemed to grate against her.

"Rhona's my name," she breathed.

"Well, that's cute! Call you Ronie?" She stretched out her arms. "Oh, slats! I'd give my teeth for a cigarette and a Manhattan c.o.c.ktail.

Wouldn't I, though!"

Rhona shuddered.

The woman turned toward her.

"My name's Millie. Now we're pals, eh?" Then she rattled on: "First time in the workhouse? Comes hard at first, doesn't it? Cut off from friends and fun--and ain't the work beastly? Say, Ronie, what's your job in little old New York?"

Rhona swallowed a dull sob.

"I haven't any--we're on strike."

Millie jumped up.

"What, you one of them s.h.i.+rtwaist strikers?"

"Yes."

"Why did they run you in?"

"An officer struck me, and then said I struck him."

"Just like a man! Oh, I know men! Depend upon it, I know the men! So, you were a s.h.i.+rt-waist-maker. How much d'yer earn?"

"Oh, about five or six a week."

"A--_week_!" Millie whistled. "And I suppose ten hours a day, or worse, and I suppose work that would kill an ox."

"Yes," said Rhona, "hard work."

Millie sat down and put an arm about the shrinking girl.

"Say, kiddie, I like you. I'm going to chuck a little horse sense at you. Now you listen to me. My sister worked in a pickle-place over in Pennsy, and she lasted just two years, and then, galloping consumption, and--" She snapped her fingers, her voice became husky. "Poor fool! Two years is the limit where she worked. And who paid the rent? I did. But of course _I_ wasn't respectable--oh no! I was a sinner. Well, let me tell you something. In my business a woman can last five to ten years.

Do you blame me? And I get clothes, and the eats, and the soft spots, and I live like a lady.... That's the thing for you! Why do you wear yourself out--slave-work and strikes and silly business?... You'll never get married.... The work will make you a hag in another year or two, and who will want you? And say, you've got to live just once--got to be just downright woman for a little spell, anyway.... Come with me, kid ... my kind of life."

Rhona looked at her terrified. She did not understand. What sort of woman was this? How live in luxury without working? How be downright woman?

"What do you mean?" asked the young girl.

So Millie told her. They went to bed, their light was put out, and neither had a wink of sleep. Rhona lay staring in the darkness and over the room came the soft whisper of Millie bearing a flood of the filth of the underworld. Rhona could not resist it. She lay helpless, quaking with a wild horror.... Later she remembered that night in Russia when she and others hid under the corn in a barn while the mob searched over their heads--a moment ghastly with impending mutilation and death--and she felt that this night was more terrible than that. Her girlhood seemed torn to shreds.... Dawn broke, a watery glimmer through the high barred window. Rhona rose from her bed, rushed to the door, pulled on the bars, and loosed a fearful shriek. The guard, running down, Millie, leaping forward, both cried:

"What's the matter?"

But the slim figure in the white nightgown fell down on the floor, and thus earned a few hours in the hospital.

They set her to scrubbing floors next day, a work for which she had neither experience nor strength. Weary, weary day--the large rhythm of the scrubbing-brush, the bending of the back, the sloppy, dirty floors--on and on, minute after minute, on through the endless hours.

She tried to work diligently, though she was dizzy and sick, and felt as if she were breaking to pieces. Feverishly she kept on. Lunch was tasteless to her; so was supper; and after supper came Millie.

No one can tell of those nights when the young girl was locked in with a hard prost.i.tute--nights, true, of lessening horror, and so, all the more horrible. As Rhona came to realize that she was growing accustomed to Millie's talk--even to the point of laughing at the jokes--she was aghast at the dark s.p.a.ces beneath her and within her. She was becoming a different sort of being--she looked back on the hard-toiling girl, who worked so faithfully, who tried to study, who had a quiet home, whose day was an innocent routine of toil and meals and talk and sleep, as on some one who was beautiful and lovely, but now dead. In her place was a sharp, cynical young woman. Well for Rhona that her sentence was but five days!

The next afternoon she was scrubbing down the long corridor between the cells when the matron came, jangling her keys.

"Some one here for you," said the matron.

Rhona leaped up.

"My mother?" she cried out, in a piercing voice.

"See here," said the matron, "you want to go easy--and only five minutes, mind you."

"My mother?" Rhona repeated, her heart near to bursting.

"No--some one else. Come along."

Rhona followed, half choking. The big door was unlocked before her and swung open; she peered out. It was Joe and Myra.

Seeing these faces of friends suddenly recalled her to her old world, to the struggle, the heroism, the strike, and, filled with a sense of her imprisonment and its injustice, she rushed blindly out into the open arms of Myra and was clutched close, close.

And then she sobbed, wept for minutes, purifying tears. And suddenly she had an inspiration, a flash of the meaning of her martyrdom, how it could be used as a fire and a torch to kindle and lead the others.

She lifted up her face.

"You tell the girls," she cried, "it's perfectly wonderful to be here.

It's all right. Just you tell them it's all right. Any of them would be glad to do it!"

And then the matron, who was listening, stepped forward.

"Time's up!"